Decided to set up my main rig up in my new office to leak test it- unfortuantely a lot of people keep coming in to look at it- they are always asking me questions about why water is the best solution, surely there are others?

I've mentioned the metal based liquid cooling solutions, but basically water is the best when confined to radiators- is this really ture?

Liquid metal is only viable as a thermal paste, and only in applications of room temperature and above. There was a company a while back who was trying to bring something out, but they went belly-up.

Water is the easiest solution beyond air cooling, because it is cheap, easy to understand, and very safe -- not electrically conductive (unless you use one of those fancy dyes or coolants). Beyond that, there's phase and peltier, but they are comparatively expensive and not for beginners, whereas any dummy could run a water cooling system.

In a nutshell, where easily obtainable and safe liquids are concerned, water pretty much beats the pants off anything else. Alcohols and glycols both have worse thermal conductivity and lower specific heat capacity, which works against them.

As far as methods such as phase and tec are concerned, they can be more effective, but since they're both sub-ambient methods, you run into issue surrounding condensation and motherboard insulation, and in more extreme cases, cold-bugging. Technically, they can be run 24/7, but you'd have to be pretty confident in how well your system is set up.

The main reasons right now for Liquid Metal not being viable as a medium is because the 'matrix' of it will break down most metals it comes into contact with.
It won't leak in a year...it would break it down in less than a month depending on the circumstances.

The only Liquid Metals Viable have other consequences:

Mercury: If you don't already know, its a toxin.
Sodium/Potassium : React with Air/Water, sometimes violently.

So yeah, until someone makes rads and blocks out of Tungsten (poor thermals) or Ceramique, those will remain in the closet.

Personally speaking, Water cooling is efficent. However, if you look at the reviews on this site (the Coolit Freezone Elite) you will see that Hybrid systems offer the best of both worlds.

TEC's (or peltier) cooling has come a long way, and the Freezone is the Pinnacle of how one can accomplish this with minimal effort.
Instead of having the Plates on the actual CPU, the use the TEC's to cool the liquid in transit to the CPU. As shown in the review, unless you set the cooling in the Software below ambient, you stand little chance of frying anything.
So, no need to worry there.

Water cooling in a nutshell = the most reliable, but with the potential to be made into so much more with some effort.

ST

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